Path 2

Path 2

Martha Stewart Responds To Daughter’s New Book

October 4, 2011

You don’t do stuff to Martha Stewart and then wipe your hands on the curtains.

And you don’t write a book questioning her motherhood skills.

Still, I must say Martha is being very cool about her daughter’s new tome that takes swipes at her without spraying her with Fantastik afterward.

On her Hallmark Channel today, Martha says:

“Well there’s a real buzz in the air, can you hear it? I think so. The studio is buzzing, my BlackBerry is buzzing. I get a little ‘ping ping’ like every five minutes. The Internet is buzzing, and it’s all because of my daughter Alexis. She’s at it again. Whateverland: Learning to Live Here.

“You think that now she’s a mom, she’s a grown-up; that she would have sort of figured it out? Well, she hasn’t. And she and Jennifer Koppelman Hutt, her radio partner on Whatever, they have written a book.

“I got an advanced copy and I actually read the book … oh, maybe about a month or a month and a half ago. I didn’t know that it was even coming. I had heard about a book but it’s all about growing up. And fabulous pictures by the way. And it is hilarious and it is enlightening and it’s full of funny stories. It’s not an autobiography. Let’s get that straight right now. It touches on everything: food, fashion, cleaning, organizing, and me. It’s irreverent and it’s lots of fun.

“Remember that Whatever, [Martha] show that those girls had on TV? That was my idea. You know, making fun of good things is a good idea. Well, Alexis, I had called her this morning and said, ‘What is the funniest part of the book?’ She had given these answers. She sat for an interview to Us Weekly, and they chose not to print her answers for some reason.”

Martha reading from a piece of paper: “One question, ‘There was never anything to eat at my house. Other people had food. I had no food. … There were ingredients but no prepared food of any kind.’ Her [Alexis’s] answer: ‘And that is how my house is today. Turned out to be a good thing.'”

To camera: “Yes if you wanted to eat when she was growing up, you had to cook something. That was the whole idea. She is a superb cook.”

Martha reading from a piece of paper: “Umm … let’s see … ‘Martha does everything better! You can’t win! If I didn’t do something perfectly, I had to do it again. … I grew up with a glue gun pointed at my head.’ And Alexis’s answer: ‘Obviously what I say in this book is an exaggeration of the truth. I’m not sure if there were glue guns when I was a kid.'”

Martha Stewart to camera: “And she’s right, there were not any glue guns. She was 20 something when I first started working with glue guns and making my Christmas book. And she says, ‘I definitely prefer to have a mother who is good at things than the alternative.’

“The best thing of all is Halloween. … She wrote: ‘Halloween was also a grim affair: There were no costumes. There was no anything. We turned off all the lights and pretended we weren’t home.’ And so her answer is: ‘Oh, OK. I left out the years when my mother made me costumes on the sewing machine. Or let me wear all of my grandmother’s fabulous costume jewelry when I was very young and was a gypsy for Halloween. It was kind of fun pretending no one was home. No one else did that or would admit that they did it. And I still do it till this day.'”

Martha Stewart: [Laughs.] “I must have instilled in her some good habits. She’s tall, beautiful, gorgeous, and mother of baby Jude and that’s all that counts. The book is out late October wherever books are sold. I encourage you to buy it, read it, and make it a bestseller.”